Scientists are enjoying an explosion in the volume and complexity (and value) of data generated in research laboratories – but the current tools available to scientists for managing and analyzing these data are grossly inadequate. Since the tools do not fit, scientists are forced to waste a lot of time doing manual data processing, and many of the results “hiding” in the data are never uncovered, because of the difficulty in analyzing data scattered across thousands of typically Excel files. Excel is a fantastic tool for working with data, but 10,000 Excel files form a miserable research “database”.

Describe your business area?

We are building a research data management platform that is fundamentally different from other products – it’s really a scientist friendly tool, based on our background in research laboratories. Scifeon is built as a software/database development platform, to be tailored to the individual lab, in an agile fashion where the system can be quickly adapted to new or changing processes. It is similar to the way that you build your lab with different instruments and tools – a “standard lab” would not work very well, and standard software does not work well for your research, either.

What makes your company unique?

We are a team of software engineers with a passion for managing scientific data – and for bringing the latest IT to the lab. But our real distinction is hands-on laboratory research experience, which not only makes it much easier to communicate with lab scientists but also enables us to drive innovative and practical ways of using IT in the lab. We believe that IT systems must make your daily research work easier – IT should not be an extra burden.

What is your future goal?

We are building Scifeon to be the first choice as data management tool for scientists – like Microsoft Word for editing documents and Microsoft Excel for data processing. We want scientists in academia and business labs across the globe to see Scifeon as their default and favourite research database.

What is your ‘burning question’?

At our current stage, our customers are really development partners, participating in a co-development effort that shapes the future Scifeon platform. We are looking for more of these development partners, to cover more research disciplines and, especially, to address academic research.